Mad Townie
New member
It’s always tough when you wake up a half hour before the alarm is supposed to go off! Anyway, I had time to check out the weather channel and read yam’s last E-mail before heading to the South Portland Wallyworld to pick her up and head up to Crawford Notch for a 3x4k day. We made pretty good time up to the Highland Center, then had to wait awhile for Shrink Rap to arrive from Farmington (“That ain’t no two hours.”)
We spotted a car across the road and drove to the Willey Station trailhead. Found a set of keys on the ground & put them on the map board. After marvelling at how small yam’s pack was (I was wicked jealous!
) we hit the trail. We must have made a funny picture, especially in the footwear department. SR wore his plastics, I had my big honkin’ leather boots, and yam wore a pair of summer boots with vent panels in the sides. It wasn’t cold at all, and none of us had any temperature complaints or frozen toes. Even the grapes in the top of my pack didn’t freeze!
The trail began rising, and we had read about the “ladders” without knowing what they were. Visions of ice encrusted iron rungs over precipitous cliffs played in (or was it “with”) our minds. The Willey Range trail does one thing: ascend. So we climbed, and we climbed, and we climbed. Finally got to the ladders, which are really log staircases with flat treads and only a little snow on them. I took my time on the uphills as usual and was happy when things eased off near the summit.
We got to the outlook on top of Willey, and although we had caught a couple glimpses of the valley through the trees on the way up, the view from the top looked like one of those gray cards photographers use to set exposures. It was a pretty, uniform gray, and we enjoyed it as best we could. Somehow we missed the summit cairn which we must have walked right by , and we looked for the summit until it was pretty clear we were descending into the col between Willey and Field. The walking had been pretty good the whole time, with very little ice. Among the three of us we had one pair of snowshoes, so that I could carry extra weight, and three sets of crampons which we never used. Although there was no wind and it was only snowing lightly, we stopped in a protected spot in the col for lunch. It snowed pretty much all day, never heavily but pretty consistently.
The Canada Jay, a really fat one, welcomed us to the summit of Field. After being fed a little by Shrink Rap it began landing all over the place: on our packs, on our hands, on our heads, while yam begged it not to relieve itself on any of us. We escaped unsullied!
The trail down Field toward Tom was pretty icy, and although we debated using crampons we decided to continue without them, and our careful foot placement was rewarded by very few slips. Stashing our packs at the junction, we ran up to the Tom summit. It was interesting to see the skeletons of several dead trees in among the young spruces, and we wondered if the area had been hit by the spruce budworm that decimated the Maine woods a few years ago. It didn’t look like fire damage, no char and plenty of small branches, so disease was the only answer we could come up with. The amazing thing was that we had exactly the same views from the Tom summit as we had from Willey and Field!
After returning to the junction and donning our packs we headed down to Crawford Notch. The stream crossings were not bad at all, although it helped to have waterproof boots in order to walk on the slightly submerged rocks. Being very close to the end of the trail, a little foot wetness was not an issue. About a mile from the end, just after the Avalon/A-Z junction, we met a couple guys who were heading up the trail. They were undecided as to whether they would spend the night or just go up and back. Since it was 3:30, I hope they decided to stay—that ice under an inch of snow can be treacherous by headlamp—but they looked like they knew what they were doing. The trail soon flattened out and in no time we emerged at the train station.
From there it was quick work to get to the car, drive back to the trailhead to pick up my ‘Splorer (and the found keys, which were still there), then head up to the Mooseland for dinner. Where were the rest of you? The drive home was slick but uneventful, and yam kept me awake by encouraging me to keep talking, which really doesn’t take much! The drive home was about 40 minutes longer than the drive up in the morning, complicated by a long stretch of being in a parade behind a salt truck on 113. 20 mph, gimme a break!
Oh, the keys: They were still on the board when we finished, and since they looked as if they had been there a few days I took them with me. I called a health club whose number was on a card on the ring, and the attendant looked the person up. “Oh yeah, he was complaining about losing his keys the other day.” So now I’m just waiting for a phone call. If the person is a VFTTer, just shoot me a PM instead.
All in all it was a fine day, with good hiking and excellent company. Yam was quite a good sport and a fine hiking companion, and she held her own with a couple of old Mainers!
We spotted a car across the road and drove to the Willey Station trailhead. Found a set of keys on the ground & put them on the map board. After marvelling at how small yam’s pack was (I was wicked jealous!
) we hit the trail. We must have made a funny picture, especially in the footwear department. SR wore his plastics, I had my big honkin’ leather boots, and yam wore a pair of summer boots with vent panels in the sides. It wasn’t cold at all, and none of us had any temperature complaints or frozen toes. Even the grapes in the top of my pack didn’t freeze!The trail began rising, and we had read about the “ladders” without knowing what they were. Visions of ice encrusted iron rungs over precipitous cliffs played in (or was it “with”) our minds.
The Willey Range trail does one thing: ascend. So we climbed, and we climbed, and we climbed. Finally got to the ladders, which are really log staircases with flat treads and only a little snow on them. I took my time on the uphills as usual and was happy when things eased off near the summit.We got to the outlook on top of Willey, and although we had caught a couple glimpses of the valley through the trees on the way up, the view from the top looked like one of those gray cards photographers use to set exposures. It was a pretty, uniform gray, and we enjoyed it as best we could. Somehow we missed the summit cairn which we must have walked right by
, and we looked for the summit until it was pretty clear we were descending into the col between Willey and Field. The walking had been pretty good the whole time, with very little ice. Among the three of us we had one pair of snowshoes, so that I could carry extra weight, and three sets of crampons which we never used. Although there was no wind and it was only snowing lightly, we stopped in a protected spot in the col for lunch. It snowed pretty much all day, never heavily but pretty consistently. The Canada Jay, a really fat one, welcomed us to the summit of Field. After being fed a little by Shrink Rap it began landing all over the place: on our packs, on our hands, on our heads, while yam begged it not to relieve itself on any of us. We escaped unsullied!
The trail down Field toward Tom was pretty icy, and although we debated using crampons we decided to continue without them, and our careful foot placement was rewarded by very few slips. Stashing our packs at the junction, we ran up to the Tom summit. It was interesting to see the skeletons of several dead trees in among the young spruces, and we wondered if the area had been hit by the spruce budworm that decimated the Maine woods a few years ago. It didn’t look like fire damage, no char and plenty of small branches, so disease was the only answer we could come up with. The amazing thing was that we had exactly the same views from the Tom summit as we had from Willey and Field!
After returning to the junction and donning our packs we headed down to Crawford Notch. The stream crossings were not bad at all, although it helped to have waterproof boots in order to walk on the slightly submerged rocks.
Being very close to the end of the trail, a little foot wetness was not an issue. About a mile from the end, just after the Avalon/A-Z junction, we met a couple guys who were heading up the trail. They were undecided as to whether they would spend the night or just go up and back. Since it was 3:30, I hope they decided to stay—that ice under an inch of snow can be treacherous by headlamp—but they looked like they knew what they were doing. The trail soon flattened out and in no time we emerged at the train station. From there it was quick work to get to the car, drive back to the trailhead to pick up my ‘Splorer (and the found keys, which were still there), then head up to the Mooseland for dinner. Where were the rest of you? The drive home was slick but uneventful, and yam kept me awake by encouraging me to keep talking, which really doesn’t take much! The drive home was about 40 minutes longer than the drive up in the morning, complicated by a long stretch of being in a parade behind a salt truck on 113. 20 mph, gimme a break!
Oh, the keys: They were still on the board when we finished, and since they looked as if they had been there a few days I took them with me. I called a health club whose number was on a card on the ring, and the attendant looked the person up. “Oh yeah, he was complaining about losing his keys the other day.” So now I’m just waiting for a phone call. If the person is a VFTTer, just shoot me a PM instead.
All in all it was a fine day, with good hiking and excellent company. Yam was quite a good sport and a fine hiking companion, and she held her own with a couple of old Mainers!
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